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Welcome to the Sands of MAUI—newsletter-style issues dedicated to bringing together the latest .NET MAUI content relevant to developers.

A particle of sand—tiny and innocuous. But put a lot of sand particles together and we have something big—a force to reckon with. It is the smallest grains of sand that often add up to form massive beaches, dunes and deserts.

.NET developers are excited with the reality of .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI)—the evolution of modern .NET cross-platform developer technology stack. With stable tooling and a rich ecosystem, .NET MAUI empowers developers to build native cross-platform apps for mobile/desktop from single shared codebase, while inviting web technologies in the mix.

While it may take a long flight to reach the sands of MAUI island, developer excitement around .NET MAUI is quite palpable with all the created content. Like the grains of sand, every piece of news/article/documentation/video/tutorial/livestream contributes toward developer experiences in .NET MAUI and we grow a community/ecosystem willing to learn and help.

Sands of MAUI is a humble attempt to collect all the .NET MAUI awesomeness in one place. Here’s what is noteworthy for the week of February 3, 2025:

Starting .NET MAUI Development

.NET MAUI is built to enable .NET developers to create cross-platform apps for Android, iOS, macOS and Windows, with deep platform integrations, native UI and hybrid web experiences. With stable platform, mature tooling and rich ecosystem, .NET MAUI is welcoming many more developers diving in to build modern cross-platform apps, and James Montemagno produced the perfect video to help—starting .NET MAUI development in 2025.

For developers just starting out with .NET MAUI, there is a lot to consume and understand before being productive. James tries to break down the barriers—the promise of cross-platform development with .NET MAUI, platform reach with integrations and IDE/tooling options for developers on Windows/macOS/Linux.

Aside from the core framework, one of .NET MAUI’s big strength is the ecosystem. James talks through developers options with toolkits and UI libraries. Web app developers using Blazor/JS libraries should also feel welcome with .NET MAUI—modern WebViews make it seamless to share code/styles between web and native apps. While it may seem overwhelming, there are lots of learning resources for .NET MAUI to suit varying developer needs and a caring passionate developer community to welcome anyone starting fresh—here’s to developer success.

James Montemagno's Dev Tips: Starting .NET MAUI development in 2025

Native Embedding

Developers love to reuse code. With the maturity of cross-platform developer frameworks like .NET MAUI, the desire was to reuse libraries/UI created for native platforms in cross-platform solutions. Now, things have come full the circle—code meant for use in cross-platform solutions can be reused in native platform projects, and Héctor Pérez wrote up an article on native platform library embedding in .NET MAUI.

Native embedding refers to the ability to make graphical components created with .NET MAUI controls consumable in .NET projects for iOS, .NET for Android, .NET for Mac Catalyst and WinUI. The benefits are reusing code, leveraging advanced customizations or using native SDKs from .NET—and then using the same UI/library in a native app project.

Héctor starts with the basics of setting up reusable components in a .NET MAUI project—there are definitely some things to clean up. The next step is to integrate the .NET MAUI control in a native platform project, and Héctor showcases the experience with step-by-step guidelines, ending with a practical example. Even specialized .NET MAUI UI components like those in the Progress Telerik UI for .NET MAUI suite can now be reused in native apps. Simply put, native embedding brings more flexibility for developers to reuse code.

WinUI project - your progress 0% - button: click me

Accessible Apps

.NET MAUI is the evolution of modern .NET cross-platform development stack, allowing developers to reach mobile and desktop form factors from a single shared codebase. As developers build modern apps, one thing that is critical to keep in mind is the need for accessibility. The business case is to make apps appeal to wider audiences with equitable user experiences. Rachel Kang has been a strong advocate of inclusivity and produced a One Dev Question video to make the case for accessible apps.

With over 1 billion people living with some form of disability, making apps accessible isn’t just important—it’s essential for market positioning. Thankfully, there is quite a bit of help for .NET MAUI developers. Rachel has a long series of content helping developers in the journey toward accessible apps. Between accessibility standards and various supported assistive technologies, developers building modern cross-platform apps already have a good head start—with a bit of learning, developers can be on their way to including everyone for .NET MAUI apps.

Rachel Kang - One Dev question - Why is it important to make my apps accessible?

SQL Vector Search

It is the age of artificial intelligence. AI is slowly changing the way we live and work, and AI’s popularity is driving adoption in enterprise and consumer apps. AI presents a huge opportunity for .NET developers to infuse apps with solutions powered by generative AI and large/small language models—a lot can be done locally without leveraging cloud AI services. Embedding models can have a positive impact on app user experience, and Damir Dobric wrote up a nice article—SQL Server native vector search for .NET developers.

Embedding, in the context of AI, is a way to capture the semantic meaning of text—the goal is to generate high-dimensional vectors for any given chunk of text. The vectors can then be useful for tasks like similarity matching, clustering and information retrieval—all leading to more contextual app UX.

Damir starts with the basics of creating embedding vectors in C# before moving on to how to insert/store such vectors in a SQL table. With vectors in place in SQL Server, there are lots of use cases that can be lit up with similarity searches and classification. Vector embedding can add a sprinkle of AI smartness toward better app UX.

.NET & C# - SQL Server Native Vector Search for .NET Developers

Maintaining Code

Modern .NET is powerful, open-source, cross-platform and welcoming to all, with mature tooling accompanied by rich ecosystems. While modern .NET developers often code over platform abstractions and benefit from framework/tooling maturity, the basics tenets of programming still apply—and developers need to keep their skills updated. A lot may be evolving, but small steps help, and Jefferson S. Motta wrote up an inspiring article—staying current with programming paradigms and coding techniques.

C# is a much-evolved mature programming language and plays a big role in keeping .NET developers productive. Jefferson starts with some simple examples of how C# language has evolved—the same programming goals can be achieved with more succinct and meaningful code.

With easy-to-follow examples, it is evident how modern C# achieves more with less—much is implicit, properties are automatic and there are guardrails around async-await. Modernizing apps and upgrading code bases may seem like a daunting effort, but developers can start leveraging the benefits of modern C# as a language in existing solutions. The goal is keeping the codebase clean and maintainable—while developers get to keep their skills updated with modern coding paradigms.

Telerik opinion image

That’s it for now.

We’ll see you next week with more awesome content relevant to .NET MAUI.

Cheers, developers!


SamBasu
About the Author

Sam Basu

Sam Basu is a technologist, author, speaker, Microsoft MVP, gadget-lover and Progress Developer Advocate for Telerik products. With a long developer background, he now spends much of his time advocating modern web/mobile/cloud development platforms on Microsoft/Telerik technology stacks. His spare times call for travel, fast cars, cricket and culinary adventures with the family. You can find him on the internet.

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